Overview

The sternly reserved expression of this portrait bust may come as a surprise in a work of the
great baroque sculptor and architect Bernini. The restrained treatment must owe something to the
fact that the sculptor was working not from a living subject but from the painted portrait of a man
who had died in 1600, when Bernini was two years old. Around 1623 Bernini's good friend
Maffeo Barberini, the newly elected Pope Urban VIII, commissioned busts of his family,
including this beloved uncle.

With the needs of his patron in mind, Bernini created a noble and dignified paternal presence
in the ancient Roman tradition of ancestral portraiture. He chose a bust form that includes most
of the chest, and curved the truncation to echo the arch of the spreading shoulders,
producing an effect both of harmony and imposing physical bulk. Shadows play over Francesco's
aged face, especially in the sunken temples, and beneath the bushy eyebrows. The sagging flesh
of the cheeks appears soft and pliant. The sculptor's drill has pierced dark wells between the tufts
of the silky beard. The mantle falls in broad folds that contrast with the crinkly pleats of the
surplice below. These varied forms and textures show how successfully Bernini strove to
compensate for marble's lack of color.

[1] For these details of the Barberini family's ownership, see Catherine Hess' entry in Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture, exh. cat., The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2008-2009, Los Angeles, 2008: 125-128. Documents in NGA curatorial files indicate that the Barberini family was attempting to sell the sculpture as early as April 1948.

[2] See the contract between Count Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi and the Kress Foundation for the purchase of 125 paintings and one sculpture (NGA 1961.9.102), formally ratified 6 July 1950 (copy in NGA curatorial files).

Penny, Nicholas. "The Evolution of the Plinth, Pedestal, and Socle." In Collecting Sculpture in Early Modern Europe. Nicholas Penny and Eike D. Schmidt, eds. Studies in the History of Art 70, Symposium Papers 47 (2008): 468, 479 n. 47.